BondMarker: Land NRW tops February charts as euros reign

Land NRW’s deal, led by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and NordLB had an average score of 8.82. Its score for structure/maturity was particularly high at 9.67.

The deal attracted an order book of €2bn (including €300m for the leads) and was priced at mid-swaps plus 3bp. One of the leads placed the concession at 1bp-2bp.

“Good timing, good spread, swaps positive and a good spread to Germany — a good result all in all,” said a banker away from the deal at the time.

A UK Debt Management Office (DMO) deal was placed third this month with a £2.75bn ($3.83bn) 2048 index-linked opening, which was priced on February 6. The deal was praised for a neat execution despite coming in volatile markets.

The European Union and the European Investment Bank scored very highly with 15 year issues in euros, while Spain rounded off the top five with a €6bn 2048 print.

In dollars, FMS Wertmanagement was the top scorer with a five year, led by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and HSBC, that scored 8.24. The deal scored particularly highly in the pricing category. Despite announcing with price thoughts deemed “quite aggressive”, by one of the leads, the books topped $2bn (excluding lead manager orders), allowing the issuer to print $1.5bn at 2bp inside price thoughts.

The average BondMarker score for dollar deals in February was 7.62, and for euros, 7.37.